it seems so obvious
My director, Sandeep, and I were at a bar hanging out with other filmmaker friends, and we started talking about immigrant parents (as we are wont to do) and realized that our two main characters in the movie don’t ever have that conversation.
It is OBVIOUS these characters should have that conversation. So how did I miss that?!
And the answer is: it is extremely hard to write a feature. You are constantly thinking granularly AND big-picture at the same time. You are having to read a thing you’ve read 1000 times as if you’ve never read it before.
And that is SO HARD.
So it helps to do what we did, which is take a long time away from the script (to do a crowdfund), and reconvene casually and be normal and not TRY to think about the movie, and then let things about the movie come to you NATURALLY.
“Try letting ideas coming to you” is a terrible piece of advice. But it becomes more realistic when you know that you are probably STEEPED in your story as it is, and coming up for air is not you NOT being steeped in it. Coming up for air is simply you being a human and being normal and living outside this industry, which is not only better for you as a person but also (gag) ultimately better for your art, anyway!
And that seems obvious, but I definitely needed a reminder this week!
More soon,
Rekha
P.S. Did you know I have a Patreon? I’m going to post more nitty-gritty creative stuff (this week I’m posting an old unproduced sketch script of mine and giving myself present-day feedback on it). So check it out!